- High Springs Police Chief Antoine Sheppard was placed on indefinite paid administrative leave on June 23 amid an undisclosed investigation.
- Community members plan a July 7 prayer meeting and City Commission attendance to support Sheppard and demand transparency on the investigation.
Hundreds of local and regional community members are speaking out against the indefinite administrative leave of High Springs Police Chief Antoine Sheppard, issued last week, with many planning to attend a prayer meeting on his behalf before the July 7 City Commission meeting.
On June 23, City Manager Jeremy Marshall informed Sheppard that he had been immediately placed on paid administrative leave due to an investigation into complaints against him.
Details about the complaints have not been disclosed to Sheppard or the public, and the city will not comment on the matter because the investigation is active. The leave followed Sheppard’s defense of keeping his department as the City Commission considered eliminating it and the fire department in May.
The city celebrated Sheppard’s 25 years with the High Springs Police Department this spring.
The reports of Marshall’s letter instantly spread across Facebook, generating dozens of shares and even more comments and emails to the City Commission.
High Springs police officer and Deeper Purpose Community Church pastor Adam Joy told Mainstreet he wasted no time planning the July 7 prayer meeting for Sheppard.
Within hours of the leave, people called Joy asking how they could speak up for the chief. He scheduled the prayer meeting for 5:30 p.m. at City Hall (23718 W US Hwy 27, High Springs) so attendees could also show up to the subsequent City Commission meeting at 6:30 p.m. and speak with the commission and staff.
Joy is encouraging as many people as possible to show up and also carry signs or wear shirts reading “WE SUPPORT CHIEF SHEPPARD, Please do!” He said he intends to rally the community to go to every commission meeting until Sheppard is reinstated.
“What he’s currently dealing with, and what the city is currently doing, is affecting the entire community,” Joy said. “He has served here with such integrity and professionalism for well over two decades now, and…everybody’s upset about it because we know him and we know what he stands for, and we know that something is going on that’s not right.”
Sheppard’s friends, family, neighbors, former teachers, coworkers and people who had 911 calls answered by the chief posted Facebook comments and sent the commission emails highlighting personal encounters they said contradicted a person who would warrant complaints.
Santa Fe High School coach and science department chairman Steve Holloway said he taught Sheppard in ninth grade and said he had full faith Sheppard hadn’t done anything wrong.
Antoinette Aglio Hunt said she’d known Sheppard since he was a boy and that he was an honorable Christian man with integrity.
“He is a local man who has worked hard and earned his position and the respect from his officers and the community,” she posted. “What is happening to High Springs? Where has the leadership gone? I stand with Chief Sheppard.”
Some had never met Sheppard and still called the administrative leave unjust, while others, including Joy, questioned the leave as fallout from Sheppard’s defense of the police department in the city’s budget and lack of transparency with the investigation.
Graze Craze owner Pam Landis said she’d always believed the community was safe under Sheppard, who had once been to her home to help with an elderly parent, before calling on the City Commission to fix the problem they’d created with the leave.
“Now this suspension is on the one person in our City of High Springs that has a heart for this area and a level head (can we say the same about our commission?) DO you have what is really best for this town?” Landis wrote. “Stop the power play, fix the town and our financial issues that our previous city manager put us in and actually do what is best for our town, not your own agenda.”
Citizen journalist Fintan Vargas, who goes by Rights Krispy, posted a statement in response to the leave. He said it concerned him that Sheppard was reaping inevitable consequences for standing up to the administration and becoming “politically inconvenient”.
Vargas said he’d come across bad cops in his seven-year career, but that Sheppard was a professional class act and a clear example of a good officer with ethical policing.
“Integrity should matter to all of us. It is measured by fairness, humility, accountability and trust earned from the community. Chief Sheppard earned that trust from me, even as someone whose work is criticizing government,” Rights Crispy wrote. “So until the facts tell us otherwise, I stand with him.”
An exception not supporting Sheppard came in a Monday email from Gena Snead.
Although she didn’t specify what information she’d leaked, Snead said her email had been hacked and that the city needed to investigate Sheppard for preventing her from getting help for whistleblower retaliation.
“I will be initiating litigation against both the city [of] High Springs, as well as the police department for gross, egregious violations of my civil rights, interstate stalking under color of state law, and RICO crimes,” Snead wrote.
Joy said the city has disobeyed protocol because a police officer must be made aware of what the allegations against them are when placed under investigation. Sheppard hadn’t.
He said the city manager has the authority to investigate the police chief, but that there are times the City Commission instructs the manager to do so. Which one happened with Sheppard, Joy said, remains unknown.
“The timing of all of this it don’t sit right with us,” he said. “The community is upset, and they want answers, and that’s why everybody’s coming to the next meeting. And we’ll continue to show up at the meetings until he’s reinstated, or we find out what’s going on.”